Live Nation Places Blame On Taylor Swift's Popularity For Ticketmaster Debacle

A response has been given in connection to the ongoing controversy surrounding Taylor Swift concert tickets.

Tickets for Swift's first stadium concert tour in half a decade went on sale earlier this week and the demand for tickets has been called 'unprecedented' by Ticketmaster. The outlet has also come under fire for unexpected technical hiccups related to ticket acquisition, and for its response to the issues.

The upset has been so widespread to the point of US lawmakers stepping in and calling for a complete revamp of Ticketmaster's practices.

Senator Amy Klobuchar wrote a letter to Ticketmaster's parent company Live Nation Entertainment Inc.'s CEO and President Michael Rapino, asking a number of questions pertaining to its current and future practices. Tennessee's Attorney General also joined Klobuchar in an effort to seek more information about various components related to Ticketmaster's business practices.

Partial Live Nation owner and CEO of Liberty Media Greg Maffei has since responded to the backlash.

Read on to learn more details surrounding Maffei's outlook on the controversy!

Tickets for Swift's "The Eras Tour" went on sale on Tuesday, November 15th, and issues over ticket acquisition began to surface almost immediately.

Fans expressed their frustration on social media, reporting Ticketmaster had crashed. 'Swifties' also reportedly encountered error messages, with some fans being completely booted from the outlet's waiting room as well.

Prior to Ticketmaster speaking out about the incident, Twitter users speculated about the reasons behind the crash.

The outlet would soon address the situation in a tweet, offering multiple reasons behind the issues resulting from "high demand" for tickets. The Captial One (the sponsor behind the tour) Presale also had to be rescheduled as a result of the demand.

Disappointed Swifties would express their frustrations toward the outlet throughout Ticketmaster's Twitter feed, and would also share their stories on TikTok.

The conversation surrounding Ticketmaster would soon evolve from being strictly about Swift's tour, into a larger discussion about the outlet's practices in general.

Economist Robert Reich weighed in on Thursday afternoon, tweeting, "Run into trouble buying Taylor Swift tickets? Blame Ticketmaster. They have a monopoly over the live-event industry, which lets them get away with providing terrible service, charging exorbitant ticket prices, and tacking on unnecessary service fees."

US senator Richard Blumenthal expressed his displeasure on Twitter as well. The Connecticut senator wrote, "Taylor Swift's tour sale is a perfect example of how the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger harms consumers by creating a near monopoly. I've long urged DOJ to investigate the state of competition in the ticketing industry. Consumers deserve better than this 'anti-hero' behavior."

As of this writing, Swift nor her management team, Taylor Nation, have responded to the controversy- a move her fans are calling to be rectified.

"taylor or taylor nation better put out a statement right now this is f**king insane what do we do," a Twitter user asked.

"the fact that all taylor nation has done is retweet the ticketmaster tweet is ridiculous," another exclaimed.

As of this afternoon, Ticketmaster will not have a "public onsale" for Swift's tour on Friday, November 18th.

The outlet tweeted, "Due to extraordinarily high demand on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow's public on-sale for Taylor Swift|The Eras Tour has been canceled."

The announcement comes after Liberty Media CEO and partial Live Nation owner Greg Maffei revealed his stance on the increasing amount of scrutiny surrounding Ticketmaster.

Maffei spoke to CNBC, doubling down on the company's stance regarding ticket demand.

"The reality is it's a function of the massive demand Taylor Swift has. The site was supposed to be opened up for 1.5 million verified Taylor Swift fans. We had 14 million people hit the site- including bots, another story, which are not supposed to be there-and despite all of the challenges and all of the breakdowns, we did sell over 2 million tickets that day," Maffei said. "We could have filled 900 stadiums. And the reality is this is not a Live Nation-affiliated concert. Taylor Swift is promoted by one of our biggest competitors. So though AOC [Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who tweeted about the controversy] may not like every element of our business, interestingly AEG- our competitor, who is the promoter for Taylor Swift- chose to use us because we are, in reality, the largest and most effective ticket seller in the world. Even our competitors want to come on our platform," Maffei concluded. (per Stereogum)

Swift announced "The Eras Tour" on November 1st.